Marked Man

43

Sometimes it’s a chore to find someone, sometimes it can take days, years, an entire bureau of detectives. Whole investigations have stalled because one key witness couldn’t be found. Sometimes it’s a chore, and sometimes it’s the easiest thing in the world.

“What are you doing here?” he shouted.

The room was an airless filthy mess, the floor covered with clothes and crumbs, the bed an unmade tumble of creased sheets and blankets. It smelled of the sickly-sweet scent of contained sweat. The screen of the computer in front of which he was sitting suddenly transformed from a lurid mix of flesh tones and red to a photograph of a gently rolling hill of green beneath a lightly clouded sky.

“No one’s allowed in here,” he said. “Get the hell out. Both of you.”

He was wearing a grimy T-shirt and ripped briefs, a pair of black socks, a pair of glasses. His arms were flabby, his jaw unshaven, the hair on his legs bristly. And when he turned to stare at us, his expression was one of horrified indignation, the holy imam whose mosque had been invaded by gaunt crusaders.

“Hello, Richard,” I said. “How’s tricks?”

“Monica,” he whined, “get him out of my room.”

She looked around at the mess, shook her head, and then leaned forward to pick up a wrinkled pair of sweatpants. She tossed the pants to her brother. “Put these on,” she said.

He clutched them to his groin. “Go away. Please.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We have business to discuss.”

“Monica.”

“Put on your pants, Richard dear,” she said.

He looked at his sister, then at me, then back at his sister before standing and turning around. His skin was the color of hard-boiled eggs, his ass was saggy, the back of his neck was pimpled. Until looking at Richard Adair in his underwear, I had never realized the health benefits of simply walking outside. With his back to us, he climbed into the sweatpants and then turned around again.

“Now will you go?”

I stepped to his desk, littered with half-eaten food, empty soda cans, scraps of paper, magazines, rolled-up panties. Panties? I fiddled with his mouse until the verdant hill was transformed once again into the mass of lurid colors. I tilted my head and stared at the colors for a moment until the array of limbs and breasts and lips and cocks all came clear.

“Yowza,” I said. “Doing research for our Web site, Richard?”

He reached over and pressed a button on the screen, turning the cathode-ray tube to a deep, empty green.

“What do you want?”

“Like I said, we have business to discuss.”

“What kind of business?”

I pointed at the now-dead computer screen. He stared at it for a moment and then turned to his sister. She shrugged.

“Really?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s talk.”

“Monica?”

“We discussed it,” she said. “I’m ready to listen.”

“Okay, then. Great.” He rubbed his hands. “I knew I’d get you on board, Victor. This will work out, I’m sure of it. Why don’t you guys take a seat.”

“Where?” I said, looking around at the room.

“Here,” he said, grabbing a bedspread and pulling it over the mess of his sheets and blankets. “Just sit down here.”

I looked at the filthy spread now covering his bed, shook my head, and leaned against the doorjamb. “I’ll stand.”

“Monica, go ahead,” he said, gesturing to the bed.

Tentatively, she sat, her hands safely in her lap.

“Good,” said Richard, turning around his chair and sitting, leaning forward like a copier salesman making a pitch. “Now, I have some experience with these sites, and I know this will be huge. We’ll start with just photographs and a chat room, small like, you know. I’ll take care of all the chatting. I know what these guys want to hear, how to make them depart with the cash. And I’ll answer all the e-mails. Later we might want to do a Web camera, but that’s way down the line, when you’re more comfortable with things. Right now we should start small. A few pictures, a few advertisements, a minimal access fee to talk to Monica online, and a very few items to sell.”

“Items?” I said.

“You know, underwear and things that Monica has worn.”

“Doesn’t it bother you, Richard, to put me up on a site like that?” said Monica.

“It’s just pictures, just digital dots and dashes. It’s not real. Trust me, Mon. And half the girls with sites that are bringing in real cash are like little rodent girls compared to you. It’s all attitude, you know. You just got to work it.”

“What about the photographs?” I said.

“I’ll take them. I got a camera. We can set up something in the basement, a few sheets for a background. Or” – he lifted up his hands – “if you want to take care of that, Victor, that’s fine.”

“What kind of pictures will I be taking?”

“Look, I’m not talking anything hard-core. Yet. Just show some ass, some tit, those long legs, pout a bit. Give the shirt a lift. It’s all just a come-on to get them to open up their wallets.”

“And you really want me to do this?” said Monica.

“We’re just talking about pictures,” he said. “And the money will be great, better than you’re making slaving for those asshole lawyers. Nothing you’re not comfortable with, Mon. And we can use a different name if you want.”

“Why don’t we call her Chantal?” I said.

He turned his head to me with a jerk, as if I had hit him smack across the face, and the enthusiasm visibly ebbed from his features.

“I mean, if we’re going to be consistent,” I said, “we might as well keep the name the same as the sister you sold out before.”

“What are you talking about? What’s he talking about, Mon?”

“We’re talking about Teddy,” I said. “We’re taking about how your special friend Teddy ended up with Chantal.”

“Monica?”

“I don’t blame you, Richard. You were as much a victim as she was. We just want to know what happened.”

“Nothing. I don’t know nothing. I told you that before. I told them all.”

“Nothing,” he said, but the quiver in his lip said something else.

“Oh, Richard, sweetie.” She left the bed and walked over to her brother and knelt before him, putting her head on his leg. “You’ve been holding it in all this time, and it’s been killing you.”

Richard tried to respond, but the shaking of his lower lip grew progressively worse and his eyes began to leak and all he could get out was a weak, tearful “Mon.”

“Look around, Richard,” she said. “Look at what has happened to you. Look at this room. You’re my big brother, my hero, but look at you. Keeping it in and staying like this can’t be worse than telling someone the truth about what happened.”

“What about the Web site?” he said.

“We don’t want to hear about the Web site,” I said. “We want to hear about Chantal.”

He was crying now, the tears falling in big droplets onto her cheek. “But I don’t know what happened,” he said through the sobs. “I don’t.”

She raised up on her knees, took his ugly wet face in her hands, hugged him close. She was crying now, too.

“Just tell us what you know, baby,” she said.

“No.”

“It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

“It will be,” she said. “We’re going to find her. I know it, I can feel it, she has spoken to me. But we need your help.”

“I can’t.”

“Sweetie, yes, yes you can. Just tell us what you know.”

And then, through sobs and tears and the racking breaths of a ruined life, he did just that.

HE HAD been a wanderer, Ricky Adair, a loner who floated through the neighborhood, the streets, the back alleys, the narrow stretch of Disston Park running after the squirrels. In those days the neighborhood was safe, and mothers let their children off on their own. Go out and play. Go out and get some fresh air. And that was what he had done, roaming wild over a landscape that was rooted in both the urban reality and the fluid fantasy of his imagination. The haunted house on Ditman, the troll who terrorized Algard Street, the witch that flew with the bats in the dusky sky above Our Lady of Consolation on Tulip. And it was on one of his wanderings that he met the Halloween Man, who was sitting on the stoop of an alleyway smoking a cigarette.

“Hey, kid,” he called out to him as he spied Richard walking down the alley. “You live around here?”

“Not too far,” said Ricky, keeping his distance. He had never seen the man before.

“You want a cigarette? Of course you do.”

Ricky took a step back. Though his mother and father both smoked, no one had ever offered him a cigarette before, and the thought thrilled him. He was nine. “No thank you.”

“You sure?”

“I’m not allowed.”

“How about some gum?”

“Okay.”

“Come on over,” said the man, reaching into his pocket.

When Ricky approached, the man beckoned him closer and told him to reach out his hand. Ricky did as he said, and the man slapped his own hand down atop Ricky’s and held it for a moment, like he was doing a trick. When the man lifted his hand, there, in Richard’s palm, was a stick of gum, with its green-and-silver wrapper, and a cigarette.

“Keep it quiet,” said the man with a warm laugh. “This will be our secret.”

“Okay.”

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll pull a pack of matches out of your ear.”

“I’m not allowed matches either.”

“Don’t worry, kid. I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“Deal,” said Ricky before running off down the alley with his gum and his cigarette and his secret.

He came back the next day for the matches and a jawbreaker, huge and yellow, that took him all day to lick down to the spicy red center. The day after, the Halloween Man gave him a Hershey bar and a magic slide that could make a quarter disappear. He amazed Ricky twice with the trick before showing him how to do it. The day after that, he gave him a Three Musketeers bar and a whistle.

“Hey, kid,” said the Halloween Man. “You got any friends?”

“Not really,” which was a sad truth. Not an athlete, not a musician, not much of a conversationalist, not much of anything, Ricky had no friends. “But I got a sister.”

“Really, now? How old?”

“Six.”

The lopsided grin grew a little more lopsided. “Bring her along tomorrow and I’ll have something for her, too.”

The next day Ricky brought along his little sister, Chantal. He had thought it through, considered all the angles, and it had seemed like a sharp enough move at the time. Chantal agreed to give Ricky half of any candy bar she received from the nice man who acted like every day was Halloween. And Ricky was pretty certain there wasn’t any danger.

He could sense danger, that was his talent, like he had a special radar in the back of his head. A little too much interest from the weird, gray-haired man in the library or the quiet snarl of a dog waiting for Ricky to slip within the ambit of his chain. He could sense danger, and he sensed nothing from the Halloween Man. Each time Ricky came by, the man would be sitting on the step out back in the alley, sometimes alone and sometimes with his four friends, a huge guy with a giant’s jaw or a small black guy or a round, soft guy or a handsome guy in jeans. And when Ricky would show up, the men would stop talking, suddenly, like everything was a secret. The Halloween Man would say, “Hey, kid,” and pull out the candy, pat his head, and send him on his way. Nothing to it. Nothing to be worried about. Just free candy and free toys and that lopsided smile. And so one day he brought along Chantal to increase the haul. He took Chantal to the Halloween Man, and everything changed.

“Hey, kid,” said the Halloween Man, standing now, looking not at Ricky but at the little girl by his side. “So who is this?”

“My sister,” said Ricky. “Chantal.”

“What a pretty name.” The Halloween Man reached out his hand and bent forward. “Hello, Chantal. My name is Teddy, and it sure is nice to meet you. What do you like to do, Chantal?”

“I dance,” she said.

“I don’t doubt it.”

“I’ve been on television.”

“How exciting is that?”

“Are you the man with the candy?” said Chantal.

“That’s me,” he said. “What’s your favorite, Chantal? Chocolate? Nuts? Marshmallows?”

“Nougat,” she said.

“Nougat? I don’t even know what nougat is,” said the Halloween Man, laughing.

“Neither do I,” said Chantal, “but the commercial says it’s good.”

“So nougat it will be next time. You’ll come back next time, won’t you?”

Chantal shrugged.

“Hold out your hand,” said the Halloween Man.

Chantal did, and the Halloween Man surrounded her little hand with his two big ones and kept them there for a long moment, before slowly removing them, leaving a Milky Way and a dollar in her palm.

Chantal’s eyes glowed with delight.

“Here you go, kid,” said the Halloween Man, tossing Ricky another Milky Way before heading back inside.

If you want to blame anything on what happened later, blame the dollar. The Halloween Man had never given Ricky a dollar.

“I get half of that, too,” said Ricky.

“It’s mine.”

“But we had a deal.”

“I only agreed to split the candy bar.”

“That’s not fair.”

“He gave it to me,” said Chantal, a sly, superior smile breaking out on her pretty face. “Get your own dollar.”

That was so like Chantal.

She was a selfish little brat, with her red shoes and her bright dimples. Darling Chantal. Sweet Chantal. Everybody’s favorite dancing doll, Chantal. She was the star of the family, the little girl who could sway hearts with a slide step and a wink. In the presence of adults, she was the ideal child, smiling and pliant and soft, aching to please, with her little-girl’s voice. Yes, Mommy. No, Mommy. Please, Mommy. I love you, Mommy. But when no one was looking except her brother, she was the sneakiest little witch on the face of the earth, stealing what was his and sharing not a whit of anything that she had been given. He resented all the attention she garnered, all the praise lavished upon her, the gifts and toys, the hugs and kisses and exclamations of joy, the way she soaked up the energy in a room and left nothing for him, nothing but annoyance and orders. Be quiet, Richard, and sit still. Chantal is dancing. Go ahead, Chantal, sweetheart. Try it again.

And now the Halloween Man had pulled it, too, giving her all his attention, giving her a dollar, just tossing him a stupid Milky Way like tossing a scrap of gristle to a dog. Ricky was too angry, too full of jealousy and resentment to sense the danger in the Halloween Man’s strange sudden interest in little Chantal, the way he used her name over and over, the way he told her his name when he had never told it to Ricky, the way he held her hand in his a little too long. Ricky should have sensed the danger, but his radar was overwhelmed with the bitterness, all of it purchased with a single dollar. Or maybe, to be truthful, filled to overflowing with the acid of resentment, he did sense the danger and just didn’t care.

“FOR SOME REASON,” said Richard, wiping his eyes with his forearm, “it wasn’t so much fun going to the Halloween Man anymore. And then, once, when we were there together, he told me to stay put while he took Chantal inside the basement to see something. When she came back outside, she was beaming, like she had just gotten the greatest gift in the world, and she wasn’t, she wasn’t, she wasn’t going to share. She never wanted to share.”

“What did he give her?” I said.

“A lighter. Gold, heavy. She wouldn’t even let me try it. After that, I didn’t feel like going back, so I didn’t.”

“But Chantal did?”

“She used to show me the candy he gave her and laugh at me because I wasn’t going anymore. And there was also the lighter, which she hid in her drawer and played with in the house whenever Mom wasn’t around.”

“The gold lighter the detective found.”

“That’s right.”

“What happened when she went missing?”

“I don’t know exactly what happened. But as soon as it happened, I knew it was the Halloween Man, that Teddy.”

“Did you tell anybody?”

“Not right then. How could I? I had taken her to him. I was responsible. Mom and Dad would have killed me, would have thrown me away.”

“You were nine,” said Monica. “You didn’t know.”

“But I did, didn’t I? And suddenly, with Chantal gone, things changed at home. It was no longer, ‘Keep still, Richard. Keep quiet, Chantal is dancing.’ It was, ‘Oh, Richard, our sweet Richard, stay home, Richard, stay safe.’ They kept hugging me and showering me with attention. They wouldn’t let me go out anymore, which was fine, really, because with Chantal gone, it was my home again and I was the star. Me. And you know the truth? I didn’t want her to come back.”

“Did you hate her so much?” said Monica.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

“You said you didn’t tell anyone right when she disappeared. Did you ever tell anyone?”

“The detective. He took me aside and promised not to tell Mom and Dad anything I said, and I told him.”

“Detective Hathaway.”

“That’s right. And he was good about it. He never told that it was all my fault. He said he would find the Halloween Man for me, but he never could.”

“Okay, Richard,” I said. “I think that will do.”

“That’s all?” he said.

“That’s all. Thanks.”

He looked at his sister, a desperate fear etched on his face. “Are you going to tell Mom?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, still kneeling. “You were nine years old.”

“Don’t tell Mom.”

“You can’t keep living like this, you just can’t. We have to clean up this room, we have to get you out of this house.”

“I like it here.”

“You can’t stay like this. You just can’t.”

“I want to.”

“Oh, sweetheart, Richard, sweetheart. Look what he did to you. Look what he did to all of us.”

I left them there, brother and sister, agoraphobe and shadow dancer, left them in that room, in tears, in tatters. And Monica was right, he did do this to them, to all of them. Not to mention what he did to Chantal, or was doing. Because I was thinking that maybe Monica had been right after all. Maybe when that bastard left with all the stolen money, he left with Chantal, too. Just taken her, taken her to his new life, to do with her as he would, with no concern and no consequences. At least not yet, not until now.

Because I was going to find him. I was going to track him down and find him. And find Chantal, too. As sure as that tattoo was on my chest, I was going to find him and make him pay. And I knew just where to start.

But first it was time to deliver a message.